Let Us Recount Our Dreams
by Mariposa Indigo
Summary: Probably my third time uploading this. ^_^;; Now newly formatted and much easier to read. Demetrius wakes one evening with the faerie love spell gone...firmly locked in his marriage to Helena.


_Customary disclaimer: My own personal challenge/what-if for myself. The challenge: make Demetrius, of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a likeable character. Not necessarily a saint, just a likeable character. The what-if: that the faerie magic has somehow been lifted, and Demetrius is left with his own feelings and desires...after he has been married to Helena for some time now. I'm just gonna roll with it until it's done or the idea goes away, but I haven't read a lot of Midsummer for about 4 months now, so it'll probably suck. R/R nonetheless, and enjoy! ^_^ _  
  


**Let Us Recount Our Dreams **  


  
They say my sleep does not match me. I move like dark energy, like rage and passion are etched into some hidden part of me, the one thing that will never change. In lovemaking, my Helen tells me, I am tender and sensuous, yet I can still feel the passion lingering like a promise to inflame us both.   
But in slumber, I am not her Demetrius, and I sometimes doubt that I am even my own. My sleep is deep and drugged, unmoving. And I have not recalled a single dream since Helena and I exchanged our vows, under the eyes of two other couples, all of us lovestruck and bursting with the energy of the heavy summer air.   
Several years later, the night that it happened, I would have none of sleep. I tossed and turned long after my beloved was lost in her own dreams, and when exhaustion finally allowed me to settle, it seemed that it was only for moments before I had snapped awake again.   
And what moments they were.   
  
It was a sensation I knew all too well, half-sleeping, half-waking. I could feel someone lingering above me, the scent of the woodland around them like a cloud, masking their presence. A faint smell rose above the others; it was a flower, a blossom I had never come across to my memory, yet it felt infinitely familiar. It lingered on the tip of my tounge, like a half-drugged illusion. Even in that precious moment of sleep, the beast within me growled, frustrated at the elusiveness of the memory.   
I felt a drop hit the lids of my eyes-the rain?-and suddenly, a feeling rushed over me, a warmth that joined with my soul and seemed to reshape it. My back arched, my body lifted towards that strager's face. A near-kiss, a mere instant of air between the presence and myself. Then I fell, back to the forest floor...no, back to my bed.   
  
And awoke.   
_  
"Relent, sweet Hermia..."   
"I love thee not, therefore..."   
"You do impeach your modesty too much..."   
"Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty..."   
"O Helen! Goddess, nymph, perfect, divine..."   
"My love to Hermia melted as the snow..."   
"The object and the pleasure of my eye is only..." _  
  
For my life and to this day, I can't say what happened to me. In an instant of waking, a lifetime of memories that I knew only as a wavering dream, that had never focused so clearly, or rung so true, passed through my mind in an instant. I could hear my voice each time. And each time, I could see through new eyes.   
As Hermia flashed through my hindsight, she was a new woman to me. With each picture of her, her sweetness and her scorn, the blush of her cheek and the look of her eyes, my heart surged with a feeling that I had once thought inconcievable.   
Yes, we all knew there was a time when I had loved her. We laughed at those half-misted memories, mocking my childhood fancies. I often wondered, as I gazed at Helena and saw all I ever wanted, how I could feel such a thing for Hermia, for a woman that was only a good friend.   
But now, I felt as if I had been hypnotized, my life taking on more sharpness and clarity than it had for years. My awareness, razor-edged and frenzied, held the full extent of my rage at the betrayal of my mind. How could I allow myself to...? I looked back on those times again.   
  
For all I am young now, I had been even younger, and headstrong. And childish. My love for Helena was fickle, yet with a deeper, hidden layer. Subtle visions and dreams of how deep our marriage, and beautiful our love, would be were not enough. And before long, I had met the best friend she often spoke of: the gentle, beautiful Hermia. And Hermia's all-too-perfect Lysander. I loved one and hated the other in an instant.   
Those passions consumed me, leaving no room for Helen. Eventually, my apathy for the cast-aside girl turned to hate. It was much easier to feel. She followed me wherever I went, giving me no peace, in her futile attempts to remind me of what we had once been. She frightened me with her obsesiveness, angered me with her pleas.   
The rejection in her eyes only reminded me of Hermia, Hermia looking like a queen in Lysander's arms, Lysander smirking with thoughtless triumph and giving no thought to me. Seeing all that in Helena's face, I could not bear the sight of her, could not even give her the slightest kindness. And she would not understand it.   
Those faces, those memories, flashed through my mind.   
  
Hermia's rejection. Justified. Cruel. I could see why she acted so, yet now I will always wish...   
Lysander's interference. Unavoidable. Hated. He would pay for stealing my dearest Hermia from me.   
Helena's persistance. Adorable. Pathetic. I can understand, in a way, the pain in your soul now, dearest heart, most hated wretch, but leave me with my thoughts and my unrequieted love. For a moment, for forever.   
  
I wrenched myself from my bed, my wife still sleeping peacefully, not knowing that a single thing had changed. Lighting a candle, the shadows slowly began to flicker over my face, casting me with a harsh, angular look to my features.. My near-ebony hair looked like the mane of some beast. The usually grey-green orbs of my eyes were now, harsh, alert and yet animalistic in their purely emerald fire.   
I could think of no one to blame for these sleepwalked years of life but myself, and so pride defeated deadly pride, and I recieved the brunt of my own curses. To think that I had thrown myself, through my own mental illusions, into this loveless life from which there was no escape...   
If I could only snuff out this marriage, I thought, this spell I have been under for all this time, however it had been cast. As if it never happened. If only I had...killed the lovestruck wench, if I must. Slain Lysander. Shown Hermia that I am the worthier, the better, win her love as easily as I won her father's.   
As easily as I won Helena's.   
Why? I wondered still. Why can I charm them so easily, yet let that be lost on the one I really want? Why are so many people doomed to want the thing they can never attain?   
A brief gust of wind, and the candle flickered. Died. And in that darkness, something else comes back to me, something I had forgotten since the day I met Hermia.   
_  
It was that same forest, creeping with fae and flowers enough that even war heroes should wax poetic. I was younger than young, and swelling with an almost egotistical pride at having won the fair Helena's soul. She was laid before me, in all chastity, of course, long ebony hair falling to the forest floor. Entwined in her hair was a chain of daisies and forget-me-nots, symbols of innocent love and of treasured memory. The daisies were traditional, but she had insisted on the forget-me-nots.   
It didn't matter to me, then. It was an addition. The white on black looked gorgeous, but the blue was the same as her eyes. I think those eyes were the most innocent I'd ever seen. They would be just as beautiful with time, but their innocence would dull, with the thoughts of becoming a wife. With the infinite pain of rejection. With the half-dream of that Midsummer night, knowing her Demetrius as a jewel, "mine own and not mine own" as she had flawlessly said it. They would never be the eyes I had looked in that day, creating the realization that I would always love her.   
That knowledge wasn't a thing of my own fancy. It wasn't fickle, and it didn't feel as it did because she was the fairest at the time. I felt unsure and shaken, knowing that my heart was lost, and I liked that feeling even less in youth. But I swore my love, and asked for her hand, right then, in spite of every insecurity. In spite of all the fear that pressed me from every side.  
And not long after, I had met Hermia. _  
  
The missing piece had finally found its home. The puzzle was completed. I had recalled and rethought, awakened and broken the spell. But until the thought of the flowers in her hair, the innocence in her eyes, I had never truly remembered.   
Helen... my Helen...is stirring. She sits up. I'm out of bed, she wonders. Am I alright?   
My answer feels as truthful as it would have a day ago. Perhaps, waking from these years of dreams, it means even more. I'm fine, my nymph, is my reassurance. Only a dream.   
Was it a good one? she asks me.   
I think of the years of sleep that I have awakened from, the deception, the hidden desires, the unchangable future. Hermia's curses and Lysander's rivalry and Helena, following, begging, smiling at me from the forest floor with those innocent eyes.   
  
_"But, as in health, come to my natural taste, now I do wish it, love it, long for it, and will for evermore be true to it." _  
  
Yes, I say, but waking to you is always better.   
I kiss her, and return to bed. The battle with sleep is brief, my emotions having exhausted me. My slumber is light and easy tonight, and for the first time in ages, I dream.   
  
_Bejeweled forget-me-not flowers that burst into real blooms at her touch. She lies on a carpet of them, bathed in sapphire gemstones and cobalt blossoms. Her eyes are as innocent as they have always been.   
The daisies of innocent, pure love are still alight in her hair. But they have no company. She will never need forget-me-nots again. _  
  
"And the country proverb known   
That every man should take his own,   
In your waking shall be shown.   
Jack shall have Jill;   
None shall go ill;   
The man shall have his mare again,   
and all shall be well."   
  


-fin- 


End file.
